50 Years of Hip-Hop: How a generation fostered creativity from urban despair and racial barriers
Hip-hop, a subculture and an art movement, was born when urban youth in crime and poverty-ridden neighbourhoods in South Bronx in New York City sought street corners to hang out and found ways to express their despairing selves. In the late 1970s, South Bronx was rocked by a manufacturing decline and an expressway that ended the local businesses. The emerging hip-hop movement gave the youths a recreative space to voice their despair and hardship, which grew to become a global phenomenon. Here's a look at the pioneers
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
Grandmaster Flash (right) and Afrika Bambaataa, circa 1980, are the other pioneering DJ and music producers who make up the Hip Hop trinity along with Kool Herc. They organised block parties in the Bronx during the late 1970s. With the release of the first rap records, a do-it-yourself urban culture was born where DJs replaced bands and kids expressed themselves by crafting intricate rhymes to flow over the records' beats.
